Conventional automotive fuel tanks contain not only fuel, but also various fuel system products, such as a fuel pump, fuel filter, fuel level sensor, fuel lines, and vent valves. Such products are usually installed through a plurality of large openings in the fuel tank after the fuel tank is formed such as by blow molding.
Increasingly, fuel tanks may be manufactured in a ship-in-a-bottle manner, in which a fuel tank is blow molded around the various fuel system components. The fuel system components may be mounted on a carrier, which gets lifted into position on a blow pin within a parison that is extruded downwardly between open blow molding tooling. The tooling closes around the parison and blow pin, which introduces pressurized gas into the parison to expand the parison into conformity with the tooling.